About

knifesex is the pseudonym of artist, musician, and writer Vanessa Irena. She makes art, experimental devotional music, and writes about magic, mysticism, and the body. Before launching her solo musical project she was a producer and vocalist for bands The Harrow and Synesect, a live member of Public Memory, and a guest producer for a place both wonderful and strange. She was the host of the dark electronic radio show TOTAL CONTROL on Brooklyn’s Newtown Radio for two years, and has contributed writing to the podcast Welcome to Night Vale.

Her music experimentally draws from elements of post-industrial, noise, and trip hop. Her work is primarily devotional and serves as both a form of ritual purification and a vehicle for ecstatic dance.

She released her first EP, Deipna, in January of 2017 and her first full-length album, dedicated to the goddess Babalon, in November of 2017. Her track Sex & Death was released on Highbrow Lowlife as part of the COVEN compilation dedicated to the memory of Lady Jaye Breyer-P-Orridge.

She released her first published work, Saint Raphael The Archangel, a pamphlet co-authored with Dr. Alexander Cummins, in July of 2018 through Hadean Press. She also released a collaborative musical piece with Dr. Cummins, a ritual invocation to Mars, in December 2018.

drones and beats and vocals from the misty depths of a metal forest.– Warren Ellis, comic book writer, novelist, and screenwriter

Alternately sinister and celestial, fusing noise, trip hop, and synthwave, knifesex’s first full-length release is a soundtrack for destroying the divide between sacred and profane, and blurring boundaries between worlds.– Kristen Sollee, author of Witches, Sluts, Feminists